Babylon.js is fun, is the unity exporter a dream come true

[benoit-1842]

Hi beautiful work les 2 Davids for B.js..... Did I read clearly : there's gonna be an exporter for Unity 3d ? Wow that's huge Is there a little hint of a release date for that ( I know that your super busy but.....it's worth asking...)  Thank you guys I will return to my Babylon.js creation.....

 

Merci,

 

Benoit

[davrous]

Hello,

Thanks for your feedback.

Yes there will be a Unity Exporter. I'm currently finishing the Web Audio engine. I'm also part of the team organizing the biggest IT event in Europe: the French Techdays 2015. So, I'm pretty busy. (there will be some Babylon.js dedicated sessions )

But our plan is to release our v2 for Techdays. I'll continue working on the Unity exporter just after that. I already have a beginning of code working fine but it's far from being completed. I will also try to map Unity audio properties to our web audio stack.

I'll try to finish the exporter for mid-March.

Bye,

David

[spritefire]

Is there going to be an exporter made for Unreal Engine?

I've asked a few people in the industry (and teachers of my bachelor of virtual worlds - programming course I am currently doing) which engine should I place my focus upon over the next two years and all came back saying that unreal engine (ue4) will be the one to be with in the next year (they cited a number of different reasons).

[benoit-1842]

Unreal is a good engine....but Unity is now part of the Microsoft family  And Babylon.js is almost a Microsoft project..... 

[spritefire]

That makes sense

[GameMonetize]

But we are always open to external contributors

[spritefire]

I've just noticed that unity 5 can deploy directly to the web with webgl.

What does this mean for babylonjs? does anyone know if unity 5 will allow you to create functions within the browser that trigger things such as calls to ajax etc, or will this be the point of difference between exporting to babylon and deploying directly from unity?

[spritefire]

ok I am purchasing the pro version so I can have a look at unity 5 beta today

[davrous]

Where did you read that Unity is part of the Microsoft family? It's definitely not the case.

 

To go back to the main topic, having a look to the last Global Game Jam: 3067 games where made in Unity out of 5443 and only 149 using Unreal Engine.

 

As we're a small team, we try to stay focused on big things. ;-)

 

David

[spritefire]

Maybe he meant that Unity uses C# whereas Unreal uses C++

I saw those numbers too which was the thing that prompted me to ask about the two engines and was told that the higher numbers for Unity reflected its ease of use and also tutorials on the web were easy to come by.The degree I am doing is almost all c++ but after playing around with Unity I am happy using both engines and look forward to a babylon exporter
 

[benoit-1842]

Sorry davrous, "strategic collaboration"   http://unity3d.com/company/public-relations/news/unity-announces-strategic-collaboration-microsoft 

 

Have a good one,

 

Benoit

[GameMonetize]

404 here

[spritefire]

404 here also. The only thing I can find closely related to the words Microsoft, Unity and acquire is this :

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2450420/microsoft-acquires-software-for-debugging-unity-games.html

There is also a mention of babylonjs in that article.

 

[Samuel Girardin]

Don t want to take part of this discussion but I think the link you gave is working without blank space at the end

 

http://unity3d.com/company/public-relations/news/unity-announces-strategic-collaboration-microsoft

[spritefire]

hmm doesn't say anything about being acquired just mentions that there is support for Microsoft products. 

Back to the topic at hand, I purchased Unity 5 Pro to have a look at the current webgl deployment and from what I have seen and tested, Babylonjs performs better, has (much) smaller file size, and greater browser compatibility.

[ozRocker]

I've been using the Unity 5 webGL exporter.  Its impressive that whole games can simply be exported to webGL, however even simple scenes won't work on mobile webGL, which is a shame since most browsing is now done on the mobile platform.  Mobile devices just don't have the power and memory to run it properly.

 

I've been using Unity5 webGL, three.js and babylon.js.  Unity5 handles shadows and animations of high-poly meshs (100k) without a problem.  I can't get three.js to work with armatures at all.  I haven't yet succeeded in getting it working 100% with babylon.js.  There are so many steps involved in getting an animated mesh into babylon.js.  You cannot simply import a DAE or FBX into babylon.js.  A lot of modifications and conversions need to be done first.

 

Here is an animated 3D model of my friend who is a personal trainer in 100k polys, exported from Unity3D http://www.punkoffice.com/luke/

I haven't succeeded in replicating that in any other framework.  I can't get that working on mobile devices either.  VERY early days with webGL

[davrous]

hi ozRocker,

 

 Your demo is cool but unfortunately doesn't run on mobile nor on IE11 on desktop. This is definitely the problem of the Unity WebGL export. But thank you for sharing your thoughts. We can definitely enhance the process to import your work into our engine.

 

 Did you have a look to this sample scene based on our engine: http://www.babylonjs.com/index.html?DANCEMOVES ?

 

Bye,

 

David

[Samuel Girardin]

Just few words . We are talking about webgl, about real time web 3d. Your 'luke' demo runs in chrome (calls about 1500 mo, and decrease to 500 mo). Nice!  But, 100 K for a character,  maybe  a character in GTA V is less. And I m almost  sure that devs and 3d designers don't reach this max level... And for this 'luke' demo , with only 7000 polys and good displacement map, the result will be the same and maybe better.  Good real time web 3d is still a mix between high skills  3d design and 3d dev. 

I made a demo ( Shameless auto-promotion ! (@temechon)  http://www.visualiser.fr/Babylon/character/default.htm  . This demo is made for desktop with good physics  (30 skinned ragdoll is less than 250 mo in chrome) , but  the basic(bones animations, one character with physics)  runs at 18 fps on my cheap  150/ euros /  bucks lumia 635 with IE (512 mo ram). 

 

sam

[Dad72]

Even with 4000 polys, that's enough to create animated character Higth poly. GTA models with about 2500 poly and normal map add to give bump.

[ozRocker]

hi ozRocker,

 

 Your demo is cool but unfortunately doesn't run on mobile nor on IE11 on desktop. This is definitely the problem of the Unity WebGL export. But thank you for sharing your thoughts. We can definitely enhance the process to import your work into our engine.

 

 Did you have a look to this sample scene based on our engine: http://www.babylonjs.com/index.html?DANCEMOVES ?

 

Bye,

 

David

Yes, I saw that dance scene.  Its using Mixamo animations which is what I'm also using.  I'm trying to do the same thing but with shadows being cast on the ground and on the person.  The guys on this forum are helping me through it at the moment

[spritefire]

Yes normals and bump maps are definitely the way to go. 
In film it's common to see high poly characters but they don't use any normals or bump maps because to them every frame gets rendered as a still frame so the viewer isn't moving their head left or right in the scene. 
In gaming or anything interactive, normals and bump maps make a world of difference. You may even find that with someone with clothing who has wrinkles etc might drop by 50x (or more) in file size. Also texturing can make something with extremely low poly appear high poly.

I've learnt that with webgl you need to think a little differently and sometimes outside the box. ie webgl/opengl only supports up to 8 lights (although some hardware won't run 8 lights) so for me this may seem like a limitation, however lights can be disabled and enabled meaning that I can write code that will disable lights that are not on the screen, so I could have 30 lights in my scene but only need 4 active on the screen at any one time. If I was making a game in Unity I probably wouldn't even think of that and when it came to deployment I would be stuck with the game only working on some hardware and would possibly have to halve the lights I just made in the game to make it work on all hardware.

You should always be trying to get the most out of the least. I have a model I have created in 3ds max and with one level of smoothing difference it jumps from 30K polys to 150k polys however there is no noticeable difference in the look. 

[ozRocker]

My models originally started with about a million polys.  They are from 3D scans of real people from my photogrammetry multi-cam rig.  I decimate them down to 100k polys.  When I go lower I do notice the difference.  The features in the face get noticeably sharper.  It wouldn't be a problem for gaming or quickly animated characters, but I'm making portfolios for people (in this case my personal trainer friend), so I'm trying to make them look realistic with the bare minimum number of polys.  However, it is a strain on mobile devices so I might just resort to using a low-poly mesh and smaller texture when viewed on mobile

[spritefire]

do you use normals and bump maps?

You should be able to drop the polys quite a lot without losing the detail and you may even be able to replicate the look you had at a higher polycount of 100k at the same time by baking the million poly character into bump mapped textures ie you might have the same look and detail of a million polys at 50k etc

Have a look around on the net also, you will find similar looking details of the push up guy around 30k. 

If you have the equipment that scans people at a million polygons you may as well bake it so that you are keeping the detail otherwise you might as well have scanning equipment that only does 100k

[gryff]

However, it is a strain on mobile devices

 

ozrocker, you might want to look at this video of a presentation by Michel Rousseau from about 4.20->9.00mins. It gives you some idea of the differences between a PC and a mobile phone.

 

Michael Rousseau works with Deltakosh and davrous - he optimized the Hill Valley scene - the video is about that - and created the car engine demo. Do those work on your IPhone?

 

Create 3D Assets

 

I know you use Zbrush - and I have said this to you before - try using the ZBrush retopology tool instead of the decimate tool. Go for perhaps 30-50K polys.

 

As for your Unity Demo, I viewed it on two desktops - an i7/Win7/1GB video RAM and an I5/XP/2GB video RAM. With the I5 machine it crashed Chrome and hung Firefox. Worked ok on the I7 machine - but mobile phones are not I7. Right now the limit with mobile phones is not webGL but the hardware.

 

Build for your market

 

cheers, gryff

 

 

[Vousk-prod.]

May I bother with a naive (and certainly odd) question ?

I'm (delightfully) using BJS and Unity, but I don't get what a babylon unity exporter could be ? An exporter that convert a .babylon file to a Unity package... a Unity plugin that opens Babylon scene inside Unity ?... A tools that open a micro usable Unity inside the debug Babylon's console ... I don't get it...

Since I've red this post I cannot sleep anymore, that spins my head as much as a colorfull mad'scientist Wingnut's expermiment :D